Wow. I'm actually intimidated to try DS1 and that video didn't help much. It would not be fun to just have to die and reload 100's of times. Still, I'm intrigued enough that when DS1 hits my price point I will get it immediately.

The biggest new reveal is that the PC version of the game is said to run at a stable 60 fps. This is in stark contrast to the sloppy port of Dark Souls that was released last year and ran at 30 fps. The PC version of the game is said to be used as the base for the other versions of the game. Development on the different platforms is going on simultaneously. The console version of Dark Souls 2 will run at 30 fps.

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We also have a look at the new game's box art, and from the look of things, From Software seems to have learned its lesson about using Games for Windows LIVE on the PC version of the game. The use of GFWL on the original Dark Souls was one of the biggest criticisms the game got.

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Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

They need to get this game to PS4 and Xbox One, and sooner rather than later. They're targeting the hardcore audience with these games, and I suspect there's a large overlap between those and the people who'll buy the new consoles right away. Will Dark Souls 2 be enough to make them go back to their PS3s or 360s, even temporarily? Will it be enough to make them keep those consoles in a crowded living room?

I can't see myself buying this for PS3/360. If these three platforms are all that the game will be released on, it's PC all the way for me.

Thank you for your purchase of the PC Digital version of Dark Souls from Amazon.com. Your purchase entitles you to a $5 promotional credit good towards the PC Digital version of Dark Souls 2.

it's nice to see they're giving the $5 credit to orders that happened quite some time ago- my DS1 order is dated 10-28-12. granted I probably won't pre-order, ht price for the PC version of the original game fell pretty quickly and I still haven't really gotten to it.

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Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

Didn't see another topic about DS2 (which I thought was odd), so I'll just post in this one. Playing the PC version, and after a couple false starts, I think it's starting to click a bit. A couple quick questions:

- Is there any way to compare the vendor's equipment to what I already have?- Which is the better option for the early game: Getting better equipment or leveling stats? - I joined a |Covenant of Blue"...what the hell does that do?

I'd love to hear the developer rationale behind losing a chunk of your overall HP meter every time you die.

Dev #1: "So, let's say a player is having a tough time getting past a particular enemy or area. Losing all their accumulated souls is a pretty fair penalty for dying, but what else can we do to make it challenging - yet fair - for them?"Dev #2: "I know! Let's take away some of their overall HP every time they die. That way, it'll just get incrementally more and more difficult to progress the more they die."Dev #1: "Brilliant!!"

I'm really kinda liking the game now, except for that one single mechanic...which I think is absolutely asinine.

In the Game Informer podcasts I linked to in the Weekend Playlist thread, they mention a ring that prevents the health loss on death. You have to have it repaired after every use, but the cost is said to be minimal compared to the benefits.

I don't remember where to find it, though. I'm sure you can find details in a FAQ.

Yes, the ring won't allow you to go below 75% full health. Using a human effigy will also return you to full health. They can be found throughout the land, and some NPCs sell them in limited quantities.

In theory you really shouldn't need any HP to beat any enemy, because they have a set pattern and if you're careful you can kill them without being hit. The devs aren't punishing you just to be mean. They're punishing you because you suck at their game.

The devs aren't punishing you just to be mean. They're punishing you because you suck at their game.

I get that. It just seems backwards to me to make a really hard game, and if someone sucks at it - even just a little bit - to then make it even harder. I know, I know..."Welcome to Dark Souls"

Then again (as AA mentioned in another thread), I'm not really the target audience for this game. It's a completely foreign concept to me, but apparently there are lots of gamers who enjoy a kick in the face along with their complimentary kick in the nuts. I'll quit bitching now and give it another couple hours to see if it's worth continuing or if Dark Souls 2 is nothing more than an increased danger of monitor damage due to flying controllers.

I played for maybe 5 hours today and so far I'm having a decent time (most of the time). I had only played the first Dark Souls for a couple hours at most because of issues with it crashing or looking corrupted on my PC, so this is mostly new territory for me.

My first hour I made a ton of mistakes with that character so I ended up just starting over with another one once I had figured out a few things. The whole "recover your lost souls first" was hard for me since I always want to explore alternate routes on my way back, but now I just go directly for my body and then worry about other stuff.

So far I'd say the game isn't super crazy hard like I expected, but you can go from safe and full health to punished by super long stuns and animations very quickly which is frustrating.

It's starting to click with me a bit more. If I have trouble with an area, I grind an area I'm good at, get some souls, upgrade a weapon or stat, and then try again.

The trick with Dark Souls is that there are a limited number of enemies, and hence souls, in each area. So grinding can only take you so far. At some point the cost of upgrades is going to outweigh the number of souls you can possibly collect in "comfortable" areas, and you'll be forced to overcome a challenge and figure out a way to push forward. It's brilliantly rewarding when you finally do break through that wall that was giving you fits, but man is it a patience-testing journey getting to that point.

I will say that so far weapon reinforcements seem to me to be the best bang for the buck in terms of cost vs benefit. Being able to take something down in two hits vs three or four is insanely beneficial when just one mistake while dodging can get you killed. I was at a frustration point tonight where I was close to just quitting out, but decided to bump my sword up a level before I stopped. Wound up coasting through the area that had just made my life hell for the past hour.

don't forget guys to do the coop. A large part of the balancing is assuming you're doing it both ways. Before you fight in an area, put your sign down. When someone summons you you get to experiment and find out the safe way to do things with no risk in their world. When you complete coop you also get humanity back so it's a great deal. This also lets you pre-test boss fights.

Don't forget to put down messages and also rate them. They don't have to be perfect and when someone rates them you get a bit of a health boost. I rarely did that in the first DS and now I do it quite often and it's helped quite a bit.

I wish there was a way to rate down messages. Seems dumb that "rating" it means it is automatically a good rating. Let me get rid of the trash/troll messages.

Quote from: Harkonis on April 27, 2014, 05:49:48 PM

don't forget guys to do the coop. A large part of the balancing is assuming you're doing it both ways. Before you fight in an area, put your sign down. When someone summons you you get to experiment and find out the safe way to do things with no risk in their world. When you complete coop you also get humanity back so it's a great deal. This also lets you pre-test boss fights.

I think I've only ever found one of the things that lest me put down a summon sign, so I've never really wanted to use it. I'll have to give it a try sometime, I've sort of run into multiple dead ends at this point.

I wish there was a way to rate down messages. Seems dumb that "rating" it means it is automatically a good rating. Let me get rid of the trash/troll messages.

Quote from: Harkonis on April 27, 2014, 05:49:48 PM

don't forget guys to do the coop. A large part of the balancing is assuming you're doing it both ways. Before you fight in an area, put your sign down. When someone summons you you get to experiment and find out the safe way to do things with no risk in their world. When you complete coop you also get humanity back so it's a great deal. This also lets you pre-test boss fights.

I think I've only ever found one of the things that lest me put down a summon sign, so I've never really wanted to use it. I'll have to give it a try sometime, I've sort of run into multiple dead ends at this point.ou

You only get 1 summon stone which you can use over and over just not in more than one place at a time. I used one before I went into a boss fight and won the 3rd time I was summoned and that turned me human and gave me full health again so it's worth putting it down near any boss.

Cool, I spent a couple hours getting summoned into other people's games and then summoned some people into mine to help beat a boss. Pretty fun helping other people, but I wish I could stay with them longer.

Man, that makes the game sooooo much easier it's not even funny. One person can kite the dumb enemies while the other one or two hit from behind and they just die so quickly. Plus I'm just raking in souls for beating all of those enemies and bosses even when I'm just helping other people.

One complaint I would have is that even with lots of souls to level up it doesn't feel like leveling up really does me much good. I think I'm level 40 (or near enough) now and I don't really feel any stronger than I was at level 20.

Tried laying down the summoning sign last night and was amazed at how quick I got summoned into a game. I did end up doing one boss solo as I had ran past lots of mobs to get to the boss area and didn't have time to try a summon before the mobs would have caught me, lots of fun.

I wound up starting over just because I made so many mistakes as a rookie. Now that I'm a little more comfortable with the game and where things are, I wanted to try a new class. It was amazing how many things I missed just in the starter zone the first time through.

Cool, I spent a couple hours getting summoned into other people's games and then summoned some people into mine to help beat a boss. Pretty fun helping other people, but I wish I could stay with them longer.

Man, that makes the game sooooo much easier it's not even funny. One person can kite the dumb enemies while the other one or two hit from behind and they just die so quickly. Plus I'm just raking in souls for beating all of those enemies and bosses even when I'm just helping other people.

One complaint I would have is that even with lots of souls to level up it doesn't feel like leveling up really does me much good. I think I'm level 40 (or near enough) now and I don't really feel any stronger than I was at level 20.

You get the biggest bang in upgrading your equipment vs leveling your character especially in the early game. It doesn't explain it well in the game but some weapons have different bonuses based on your stats, if you look at the bottom left when selecting weapons you will see them down below. So a weapon that doesn't look that great early in the game can become quite powerful with upgrading plus the addition of your stat bonuses.

Cool, I spent a couple hours getting summoned into other people's games and then summoned some people into mine to help beat a boss. Pretty fun helping other people, but I wish I could stay with them longer.

Man, that makes the game sooooo much easier it's not even funny. One person can kite the dumb enemies while the other one or two hit from behind and they just die so quickly. Plus I'm just raking in souls for beating all of those enemies and bosses even when I'm just helping other people.

One complaint I would have is that even with lots of souls to level up it doesn't feel like leveling up really does me much good. I think I'm level 40 (or near enough) now and I don't really feel any stronger than I was at level 20.

You get the biggest bang in upgrading your equipment vs leveling your character especially in the early game. It doesn't explain it well in the game but some weapons have different bonuses based on your stats, if you look at the bottom left when selecting weapons you will see them down below. So a weapon that doesn't look that great early in the game can become quite powerful with upgrading plus the addition of your stat bonuses.

What I run into is that I have many many souls but not enough Titanite shards/chunks/slabs/whatever to upgrade things so I tend to level up when I can't upgrade weapons. Would love to find more Titanite.

Cool, I spent a couple hours getting summoned into other people's games and then summoned some people into mine to help beat a boss. Pretty fun helping other people, but I wish I could stay with them longer.

Man, that makes the game sooooo much easier it's not even funny. One person can kite the dumb enemies while the other one or two hit from behind and they just die so quickly. Plus I'm just raking in souls for beating all of those enemies and bosses even when I'm just helping other people.

One complaint I would have is that even with lots of souls to level up it doesn't feel like leveling up really does me much good. I think I'm level 40 (or near enough) now and I don't really feel any stronger than I was at level 20.

You get the biggest bang in upgrading your equipment vs leveling your character especially in the early game. It doesn't explain it well in the game but some weapons have different bonuses based on your stats, if you look at the bottom left when selecting weapons you will see them down below. So a weapon that doesn't look that great early in the game can become quite powerful with upgrading plus the addition of your stat bonuses.

What I run into is that I have many many souls but not enough Titanite shards/chunks/slabs/whatever to upgrade things so I tend to level up when I can't upgrade weapons. Would love to find more Titanite.

Yeah, that's basically the same situation I'm in. I have upgraded my two weapons as far as I can with the little Titanite shards (3 times each I think) but have found none of the next size that I need, so I'm just spending tens of thousands of souls leveling up my character.

Cool, I spent a couple hours getting summoned into other people's games and then summoned some people into mine to help beat a boss. Pretty fun helping other people, but I wish I could stay with them longer.

Man, that makes the game sooooo much easier it's not even funny. One person can kite the dumb enemies while the other one or two hit from behind and they just die so quickly. Plus I'm just raking in souls for beating all of those enemies and bosses even when I'm just helping other people.

One complaint I would have is that even with lots of souls to level up it doesn't feel like leveling up really does me much good. I think I'm level 40 (or near enough) now and I don't really feel any stronger than I was at level 20.

You get the biggest bang in upgrading your equipment vs leveling your character especially in the early game. It doesn't explain it well in the game but some weapons have different bonuses based on your stats, if you look at the bottom left when selecting weapons you will see them down below. So a weapon that doesn't look that great early in the game can become quite powerful with upgrading plus the addition of your stat bonuses.

What I run into is that I have many many souls but not enough Titanite shards/chunks/slabs/whatever to upgrade things so I tend to level up when I can't upgrade weapons. Would love to find more Titanite.

Yeah, that's basically the same situation I'm in. I have upgraded my two weapons as far as I can with the little Titanite shards (3 times each I think) but have found none of the next size that I need, so I'm just spending tens of thousands of souls leveling up my character.

That's what I'm finding as well, in the first game there were enemies who would drop them(haven't found them yet) and the blacksmith had an endless supply(every vendor has limited items) so they have made small changes all around.

Just want to say I beat DS2 yesterday. Such a great game. I've now beaten Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls 2, thus demonstrating I am a very patient person.

Seriously, though, I love these games. I've not done a New Game+ in a game before, but just started one this morning for this one. Right off the bat, there were new enemies not int he first run-through, so excited to play some more.